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ho Put Down the Rebellion. 



S COMMANDERY 



OF THK 



Military Order of the Loyal Legion 



OF THE UNITED STATES. 



'War Paper XTo. S3. 



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A PAPER 



Read before the Kansas Commandery, Military Order of the 
Loyal Legion of the United States. 



Companion Captain John T. Taylor. 



THE MEN WHO PUT DOWN THE REBELLION. 



Read by Companion Captain John T. Taylor before the 

Kansas Commandery, Militarj' Order of the 

Loyal Leg-ion of the United States. 



Tis said that, 

"When danger's rife and War is nigh, 
God and the Soldier's all the cry : 
When danger's o'er and wrong is righted, 
God is forgot, the Soldiers slighted." 

The Men who put down the rebellion averaged twenty 
years of age, when the roar of that first cannon broke on 
Sumter's walls, and echoed down the ages. They repre- 
sented in the aggregate more than a million units of fervid 
unquestioning patriotism, and four million years of hard 
dangerous il I requited service. They are the men who, when 
the call to arm-i was sounded, came from the scliool, the 
mills, the office and farm, to do battle in behalf of national 
existence, and to make plain to all the world the fact that 
this Union of States is One and indivisable. They are the 
men who cheerfully, enthusiastically threw aside all hopes 
of business or political preferment ; who exchanged com- 
fortable homes for the dispa«e breeding camp, and the dead- 
ly conflict ; who forsook the plea^^ant highways of peaceful 
urban, or rural life, to march through snow and mud and 
fire, and a terrestrial hell, in onier that a great principle 
might be established on the deepest and broadest foundation 
human minds cou1<l plan, or human hands uphold. 



But who can recount their deeds ? The annals of man- 
kind hold no parallel to the tremendous record of offering 
and sacrifice made, that America might not perish, bat that 
she might, as she is doing today, lead the van of the civil- 
ized nations of the earth. When valor and heroism crown 
so many youthful brows they cease to bring distinction. 
Had but a single thousand gone out to battle and half of 
them returned, the nation would have prostrated itself 
before them, and set their statues on pinnacles that pro- 
claimed name by name their imperishable renown. But when 
a million heroes come marching home victorious, and the 
flags shook out their tattered folds to tell of a thousand 
bloody conflicts won, the minds of men were paralyzed with 
the effort to compass the mighty sum total of doing and 
daring. The lingering minor faction of that youthful host 
are the old soldiers of today. They lag superfluous it may 
be, but they will not linger long. Those who hate and those 
who love them may learn with pleasure or with pain, that 
over forty thousand annually muster for retirement to their 
eternal home. When they are all gone perhaps the earneil 
honor may com?. Mean time the Old Soldiers exist, an 
active element in the body politic, observing with interest 
the events and tendencies of the hour. They are pledged to 
the promotion of honor and purity in public affairs and are 
full of faith in the Nation's imperial destiny. They reve] 
in the felicity of a glorious reminiscence. They proffer no 
apologies for paying annual tribute to the memory of their 
departed comrades, and, if a gracious obliteration of the 
past is to be invoked, claiming none of it for themselves or 
their deeds, they freely yield it all to those who in the 
supreme crisis "closed their ears to a pentecostal messaije, 
and veiled their eyes to the dawn of a millenial splendor." 

The Old Soldiers demand that the arm of national 
power be stretched out to protect every citizen in his rights 
at home as well as abroad. They demand that America shall 
be for Americans, by nativity or adoption, for those to whom 



its institutions are a birthright, and for those who come to 
our shores bringing' due appreciation ol: its blessings, spurn- 
ing back every red-handed apostle of anarchy, whose only 
iilea of freedom is the death of la-v, an<l who boasts of thrift in 
robbery and violence. The OIJ Soldiers demand free schools, 
unlimited religious toleration, enlarged industrial develop, 
ment, broad unobstructed avenues for the advancement of a 
civilization the ripest and richest our earth has ever known. 
But time presses an ellipsis of the grateful score. There 
was a day of the "Noble Boys in Blue," but its sun has set. 
This is the day of the '-Old Soldier. It is but a span. When 
they are gone the legacy of their fame, the story of their 
sacrifice will be the peerless possession of liberty's successive 
generations. And the descendants of the men who put down 
the rebellion will hive no prouder heritage, even in the 
richer better days to come, than a clear chuin of title to a 
genuine badge of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion or 
the Grand Army of the Republic. 

"They stood, who saw the future come 
On through the War's delirium. 
They smote and stood, who held the hope 
Of nations on that slippery slope 
Amid the Cheers of Christendom." 



